THE PAST BECKONS

A STORY ABOUT A HOUSE AND ITS FAMIY

by Melinda Stewart, Photography by Mary Schmalstig

The buildings were leaning, their foundations falling from beneath them. The house stood in the
overgrown bluegrass, surrounded by old cedar trees, its siding weather-worn, some of its
windows broken out.

The longer I lingered studying the farmstead in the silence, the more the place seemed to beckon
me to find out more about it, until soon I was oblivious to the present world. When I stepped into
the house, time became a funnel drawing me into the past.

[5]

"Mother, Ellen won't help me set the table for dinner," Tilly Franz screamed from the dining room
to the kitchen where her mother, Anna, prepared her large family's supper.

"Ellen, help your sister," Anna yelled. Usually Anna was a quiet even-tempered person, but she
was due any day and didn't feel well.

When Henry came in to wash up from his long day of work on the farm, supper was almost ready.
From the washroom where he dipped water into the wash basin and washed his hands with the
yellow lye soap, he could smell the homemade bread baking and the fresh green beans cooking
with a bit of bacon.

"Papa, I made the pie for supper," Ellen said proudly.

After Henry said the blessing, the children grabbed the drumsticks and the biggest pieces of bread.
There were only a few interruptions of talking and passing food while the plates were emptied and
the ravenous appetites were satisfied.

After Adele and Tilly cleared the dishes, the family moved to the living room to relax as they
usually did to talk about their day or listen to their father read from the newspaper or the Bible.
On the day couch Anna crocheted on a baby wrap, explaining some of the simpler stitches to
Ellen. Next to them Adele and Tilly hemmed the last of the diapers. Henry in the large wooden
rocking chair smoked his pipe and rocked his two-year-old son Otto on his lap.

The older girls were talking about some new boys at school from a family who had just
immigrated from Germany, when Adele realized that Otto had never heard their family's history.

"Tell again your story of coming here so Otto can hear it," she asked her father.

Hugging his first-born son to him and smiling at his three daughters, Henry began. "Your Uncle
Otto and I came over in 1864 from Germany. Your uncle was a college professor and I was a
certified public accountant. There were wars in Europe and we came here to the United States to
avoid serving in the German Army.

"I always liked farming in Germany so when we came to the Ozarks, we looked for some land in
the country but also close to a town so I could do some accountant work. There were
advertisements in Germany about the Ozark land. The railroad wanted more business. It sounded
good to us, so we came here and we each bought forty acres from the railroad. We got a good
deal on the place. We didn't know there was a spring here until after we bought it.

"You know that south pasture? That's where we spent our first winter in a lean-to we built in the
field. That was the winter of '65 and the snow was pretty bad! It got plenty cold, but the whole
place was wooded, so we kept warm twice."

"How'd you do that, Papa?" Otto asked.

"We got warm cutting it, then we got warm burning it," he teased. "Anyway, we started pretty
quick building the barn. We finished that then we built the house. Of course, at first it was only
one story. Later on as we could we built the out-buildings--the chicken house, the tool shed and
the calf barn after we dug the cellar.

"But after that harsh winter in an unfamiliar land, your Uncle Otto got homesick for the old
country and returned to Germany. I liked it here, so I bought his forty acres and have been here
ever since."

Anna started telling part of the story because Otto was fidgeting, and Henry had to put him down.
"I remember your father when he first came to live on the next farm to us down the road a mile
and a half. News of every new neighbor spread, but news of two single, sophisticated and
educated men like your father and uncle was talked about all over the neighborhood. Your father
was an uncommon person. He looked different than anything we had seen before because he had
such a heavy head of hair and distinguished looking goatee and especially because his brogue was
so thick you could cut it. He was a hard-working man, honest and dependable. When I first saw
him, I was only a child, but I saw him every Sunday at church. I had a crush on him, but since he
was a grown man, he barely noticed I was alive--or any girl for that matter for he worked so
hard."

"I was waiting for her to grow up," Henry whispered to Adele, "but don't tell her."

[6]

"After six years nobody caught him," Anna continued ignoring the interruption. "He was almost
thirty and most of the girls his age had gotten married or left. Then he just started sitting by me at
church, and a year later we got married.

"Soon we had you three girls, Adele, Tilly and Ellen and the house was filled with life. Your
father and I were happy because we were blessed with a healthy family, and we were prospering.
God had given us three girls, and we thought that would be all we'd have until He gave us Baby
Anna on Christmas Day in 1878. Then all of you girls came down with diphtheria when it hit here
in 1881." Tears rolled down Anna's cheeks, and for a moment she was silent.

"Your sister Anna died two days after her third birthday. She was too young to fight off the
fever." Anna couldn't finish the story. Adele sat quietly remembering her little tow-headed sister,
and how every now and then she would get into her parents' closet to look in the box where her
mother kept her sister's dress.

After a moment Henry finished the story. "We hoped to have some sons and needed more room,
anyway, so we built the upstairs on the house."

"How'd you do that, Papa? Didn't the rain come in?" Otto asked.

Henry smiled at his son. "No, Otto, the rain didn't come in. Our neighbors helped us build it. We
did it fast before it rained. You children ought to be thankful. We have been blessed with good
neighbors. We have a good home, plenty of food and a growing family. And soon, the Lord
willing, you'll have another little brother or sister."

Henry emptied his pipe and then at 7:30 got up, telling the children it was bedtime. The older girls
hurried to bed, while Henry went to the calf barn to check on the calves and Anna walked Ellen to
the outhouse. She was still afraid of the dark, and since it was a good time of the year for snakes,
her mother went with her. While she was out, Anna looked in on the chickens and joined Henry in
returning to the house after he let the mules in the yard to eat the grass, keeping it cropped low.

The creaking of the outhouse door broke the silence and brought me to the present. The outhouse
was larger than most with two separate rooms--obviously once a his-and-hers arrangement. But in
more recent years only one side showed use. There the wooden seat was worn smooth, while the
other side was piled with clutter. Mud daubers had built nests inside both rooms.

The chicken house was not far from this building. In design and construction it was very similar to
the best family hen house today with a concrete floor, well-constructed roosts, and feeders
hanging from the ceiling. There was very little decay here. Even the glass covered by chicken wire
was still on the windows.

In the adjoining calf barn an old grindstone sat amidst some rusty machinery. The family had kept
the calves in this shed close to the house during weaning and when they were sick.

Back in the house I slowly climbed the narrow staircase, listening to the boards crackle under my
feet. I pondered what it must have been like when those steps were new. What was it like to be
Adele in 1888 when she was fifteen and the oldest girl in the Franz household?

Soon everyone was back in the house and the kerosene lamps were blown out. Ellen and Tilly
started arguing because they kept pulling the blankets off of each other. Their father's stern voice
came from downstairs and resounded through the house, "Ellen! Tilly! Stop fussing and get to
sleep!" The children immediately quieted, obeying their father's command.

In a little while everyone in the family was sleeping except Adele who could not sleep because of
the sadness she felt remembering Baby Anna, and also because she worried about her mother's
pregnancy. The sounds of her brother in the next room mumbling in his sleep and the rhythm of
her beloved father's snoring floating up the stairs comforted her with a sense of security. Soon
she, too, was asleep.

Inside the old house the breeze that gently blew the tattered curtains through the broken window
hit my face, making me aware of the room I stood in. The yellowed bedspread and coarse muslin
sheets that covered the flattened feather mattress and musty straw tick reminded me that these
events were illusions, that they happened ninety years ago.

[7]

The Franz family in 1892.

The family at Tilly's wedding in 1904.

Steve, Herb and Otto slept in this shelter to be on the spot to protect the herd of goats from wolves
and coyotes.

Old photos courtesy of Betty Franz

[8]

Two sons pitching hay on the haystacks.

Henry and the youngest child, Alma, in front of the hay wagon as the sons load it.

Goats were used to help clear the land of the sprouts and brush.

[9]

The shoes under the bed, Anna's corset draped over the chair, the porcelain chamber pot by the
door--everything in the room was just as last used many years ago. When Anna died in 1932 this
bedroom was closed up; nothing, including even dresser scarves, was moved. The dresser drawers
still held personal belongings and the closet still protected clothes. I reached up to get a box from
the closet shelf. As I slowly brought it down, I was showered with mud daubers nests and dust
that had been settling through the years.

The box was marked "Anna's dress," and when I carefully opened it, I found a little girl's
low-waisted dress and sash--the one that Adele had cherished so much! The dress was still stiff
from the starch used in ironing it, and the blue designs were still clear on the yellowed, white
background. I folded it back in the box wondering if, with the exception of Baby Anna's grave,
this might be all that was left to remember her.

Opening the doors of the washstand, I found stacks of pamphlets and books. Since Henry spoke
and read both English and German, there were many publications written in the German language.
Among these I found some almanacs from the turn of the century. As I was leafing through a
1914 German almanac, I saw a picture of a German soldier with a caption in German which I
could make out, "Field Marshall Von Hindenburg." I remembered my history and was stunned to
see pictures of actual German campaign rallies for the first World War. I had to wonder about
Henry's feeling during this time.

The next book on the stack was a German Bible dated 1845. Though I looked for the family
record in it, I couldn't find any writing. One page, probably signifying someone's favorite
scripture, was marked by a brown braid of hair from one of the girls.

I also found a thin 1900 pamphlet. The introduction explained that it was a magazine published by
the Frisco Railroad advertising vacation stops along the railroad in some of the most beautiful
homes in the Ozarks. Leafing through the pamphlet, I came to one page that was more worn than
the others. In the corner there was a picture of the Franz house in its prime with this caption:

Two story frame house, eight rooms, in beautifully shaded grounds. Accommodations for
ten or twelve people. Large spring near house. Good riding and driving horses and vehicles
for hire at reasonable rates. Beautiful stream of water runs through the place.

The family took advantage of the railroad promotion to entertain boarders to pay for their
vacation to the world's Fair in St. Louis and to have money for the children when they decided to
leave home.

The family was excited preparing for their first guests who were from St. Louis. Joseph
Haderlein, a small timid man who had always lived in the city and his wife, Emily, wanted to show
their eight-year-old son, Jeremiah, that there was another way to live besides the crowded city
life.

Late in the afternoon, Henry and Otto met the train at the Rolla depot and drove them to the farm
in the buggy. Though the Haderleins were tired from the trip, they were also excited at the
prospect of living on this beautiful farm for a week, The proud horse trotted up the curved
driveway past the shaded lawn and stopped by habit at the well pump. Just ahead the guests could
see the rolling hills and neat green meadows with cattle grazing. The sun was just setting as they
stopped and the family spilled from the house and barns to welcome them and escort them into
the house.

"Adele," Anna said, "take them upstairs to their rooms. Mrs. Haderlein, supper will be ready in
fifteen minutes."

The broadloom rungs on the floor, the new flowered wall paper in the hall and the shining and
spotless staircase all showed a sense of well-being earned from hard work and diligent care. The
summer breeze blew through the airy bedroom. The girls had readied the rooms for the guests by
filling the big ceramic pitchers from the well and setting them in the larger basin bowls and by
hanging fresh clean towels on the stand for the guests to wash away the dust of the trip.

[10]

Morning came early to the newcomers who were not accustomed to the crowing roosters or
getting up at dawn to the smell of ham frying and coffee brewing and the sounds of the men
outside finishing the morning chores. The Franz girls had breakfast almost ready with Anna
overseeing them to make sure the preparations were done just right when the guests ventured
down the stairs. To the Haderleings, getting up at four A.M. to the hustle and bustle of the farm
life was confusing, but to the large household it was normal.

Most of the children had their own chores to do. Otto, almost a man now, helped his father feed
the stock in the barn. Herb and Steve, who were eleven and nine, split and carried wood into the
kitchen for their mother, and Harry, who was seven, played with the young guest Jeremiah,
introducing him to his dog.

Anna sent Ellen to feed the chickens and sent Alma for jelly from the cellar under the tool shed.

The tool shed was piled high with old tools and supplies. The family had saved every little scrap
of everything, planning for the day it might be needed, and as I walked through, I had to step over
busted nail kegs, old tool handles and feed sacks. A butter churn handle leaned against The wall,
and several scythes hung from the rafters.

At the back of the room a trap door in the floor led to the underground cellar. The door was
jammed from the shifting of the building, and as I pried it open, I remembered my fear of the dark
and scared myself by thinking of the dangers that could be within--the steps giving way, spiders
and snakes.

A cool draft of air escaped from the black hole in the floor as I opened the door, but in a minute I
could see the step in front of me. A gleam of sunlight from a tiny window in the cellar filtered
through the glass lids of blue Mason jars revealing ancient canned beets, blackberries and beans.

Gingerly stepping down the feeble stairs, testing each board first to see if it would hold my
weight, I avoided the old green fruit jars, large stone pots and water jugs sitting on the steps. At
the foot of the steps in almost total darkness, I was enveloped in a damp earthy smell. As my eyes
became more accustomed to my surroundings, I detected a large keg used for homemade wine.
When I could make my way around the cellar, I found wine jugs still plugged with newspapers
wound up like a cork and many more jars of canned food.

The stone walls were sealed by cement and the earthen floor was packed down tight from many
years' traffic. Log posts held up the ceiling, which also served as the floor to the tool shed above.
In the last years of Steve and Harry living here when the cellar was no longer used much, junk
was thrown down into it. Cautiously I stepped over narrow solid rubber Model T tires, old rusty
wire, rope and rotting boards which littered the floor. Soon I became chilled and remembering my
fear of snakes, returned to the warm sunshine.

Perhaps the most fascinating building of all was the big barn next to the tool shed where the
horses were kept. The barn stood majestic, time marking the rust-colored weather-beaten sides
whose once red lumber hadn't been painted for fifty years.

Opening one of the many doors, I stepped inside on the sagging but solid wooden floor made of
railroad ties. Since very few barns had wooden floors, I realized that at one time this was a
showpiece. Light entered the building through the cracks between the seasoned oak siding and
through the windows which had previously been covered with feed sacks to keep out the wind
and rain. The sacks now hung in shreds, worn through from years of exposure to the weather.

By the worn wooden feed troughs I discovered several curry combs and brushes still lying where
someone last laid them after currying the animals. Near the stall a man's worn denim jumper, stiff
and musty with age, hung on a handmade peg that also held old pieces of harness. Leaning against
another stall, I found a one-legged milking stool covered with cobwebs. A cattle prod hung above
it on the wall waiting patiently, it seemed, until dawn when the family would come to do the
milking. A rusty pitchfork lay in the hayloft whose log floor sagged only slightly after all the years
of holding so much hay.

[11]

After Ellen and Alma returned to the house from their errands, the family and their guests sat
down to eat. While eating, Henry made plans to have Otto and Herb help him with the farm work.
Not wanting to stay at the house with the women and children, Joseph Haderlein decided to go
with Henry, and since the women had to do some last minute canning, his wife thought she might
enjoy helping.

Breakfast dishes were cleared, Henry, Otto, Herb and their guest went to the barn, while the little
boys and Alma played in the yard and Steve carried wood into the summer kitchen from the
adjoining lean-to for the women to use in their canning.

Just a step from the house, the lean-to sheltered not only the supply of wood, but also the family's
supply of grain in metal grain bins. Two rooms adjoined the lean-to, one serving as another
piled-up tool shed, the other as a summer kitchen and bathhouse. Instead of having a fire in the
wood cook stove in the house during the heat of July, the Franzes, like many other people at that
time had an outside summer kitchen. Here they did their hot work like canning and heating water
for washing and bathing. I was surprised to see a bathtub in the corner. This must have been real
luxury at a time when a wash tub by the kitchen stove was the best most people had. This was a
real bathtub made of tin painted white. The drain led outside through the wall. The women also
did their laundry out here.

Now, it too was cluttered with old feed sacks, clothes and shoes with dust covering everything.
Like the cellar, this building was probably not used for its original purpose since Anna died. The
discarded shoes, the jugs, the cans--everything gave evidence of the activity of the busy days this
place once experienced.

The women were dashing back and forth from the kitchen getting ready to start making jelly. The
two oldest girls were carrying a bushel basket of grapes from the nearby vineyard and washing
them at the pump. Anna and Emily Haderlein were in the summer kitchen building the fire and
washing the big pans they needed to use.

Soon the smell of cooking grapes caught and dressed three chickens for dinner, for hardly had
they finished clearing up from breakfast than they began preparing dinner.

The children ran in and out of the house yelling and slamming screen doors until Anna banished
them to the yard where Steve joined them after he finished carrying in the wood.

The women could hear the sounds of rolling logs and thuds of falling lumber down at the barn as
Henry and Herb loaded the posts to mend the fence. Otto and Joseph led the draft horses out of
their stalls, and Otto showed the newcomer how to hitch the team to the wagon.

After mending the fence, the men cut firewood to sell in Rolla for $1.50 a cord. Later in the day
Otto and his brother used the mule to pull some rotten stumps where they had cut wood the year
before.

Activity such as this was a common occurrence at the Franz farm. Another time seventeen years
later in 1917, the yard was full of people when Steve left for the army.

The photographer placed the family together in front of the house for the group picture. Everyone
had come home to see Steve off, except Otto who was already in France. The house once again
was filled with the active sounds of the large family.

Anna had been looking forward to her family coming home, but since Steve was one of the last
children to leave home and he was going to the war, his eminent departure weighed more heavily
on her mind than her other children's leaving.

She remembered when the others left. Adele had moved to Washington state several years before,
Matilda got married in 1904, Ellen had gotten a job in Rolla, Otto was already in the service and
Herb had married Maude a few years before. Harry and Alma, the youngest in the family, would
be the only children left at home. After the army had turned him down because of his speech
impediment and tilted neck, Harry had promised to stay and help his aging parents run the farm.
Henry at sixty-eight and Anna at sixty-one both knowing that they would not have all their
children together in the house too many more times, spent every second they could with them.

[12]

The photographer finally got the group together and snapped the picture. Afterwards the children
and their families packed, and weepingly saying good-bye to their parents, they dispersed. As the
house one by one gained its inhabitants, it slowly lost most of them. When all were gone this time,
it felt quite empty to Anna, Henry, Harry and Alma. The four went inside and quietly went about
their normal daily tasks.

The following years melted together, each indistinct from the others. The high point for the family
at home was when the mailman brought the many postcards the Franz children wrote.

Picking up a dusty postcard on the floor, I noticed the other stacks of cards around the room.
There were hundreds of them, each with a piece of the family's history. I learned of Alma's leaving
home, the births of grandchildren, vacations, illnesses and well wishes for anniversaries and
birthdays.

In the parents' bedroom I also found a photo of Anna taken when she was much older and
heavier. The years of working hard, staying up with children, and the recent death of her husband
had drained her of her energy. She looked very tired. The date on the back of the photo was
August 1932. Soon after the photo was taken, Anna died on September first.

Most of the children were once again united in the house. Many had not seen one another since
they were home for their father's funeral. This gathering as the last was a sad one, Anna's funeral.

The women did the necessary work of food preparation quietly. Since there was plenty of food
brought in by the neighbors, Tilly, who took charge from habit, didn't have much to do. As she
heated up a pot of soup, she remembered the last time she stood in the kitchen. Then, too, she had
taken charge of the meal because her father had died, and her mother was tired from caring for
him through his illness. That was four years earlier, and Alma had written her when her mother
first came to visit her that she had not recovered her health.

After their mother was buried, the family once again left for their own homes. Steve and Harry
were the last Franzes left to live in the house. After their mother's death they never went into her
room, leaving everything just as she had left it when she left to visit Alma where she had died
suddenly. These two youngest brothers never married. They worked the farm living in a few
downstairs rooms. As the years passed, the house began to show a few signs of age and neglect.
Though it had always been brightly painted, the men, also getting older, let it go unpainted. They
kept the barns in better condition, but they also began to show their age as rocks in the
foundations slipped and were not put back, and junk piled up in unused corners.

After their mother's death, the brothers also decided that they would do nothing to modernize the
farm. They loved the farm as it was when they grew up, wanting to keep the house and the
surrounding area as it was without electric power lines over their land.

Their brothers and sisters occasionally wrote to the men at home. Otto and his wife Clara lived on
an adjoining farm. Their son Henry (Hank--the only grandson to carry on the family name) and his
wife Betty often came to visit. Then in 1961 Hank and Betty moved across the road from the
farmstead to help on the farm and take care of them in their old age.

At four o'clock every day, Steve and Harry would go to Hank's home. Telling stories to their
nephew and his family was their favorite pastime, and the family enjoyed listening to them. Their
youngest grand-nephew, Steve's namesake, Steve, enjoyed running his hands through his uncle's
thick snow-white hair.

They lived contently and quietly for the next few years until Steve's death in 1963. By then Adele,
Matilda and Ellen had also died.

After Steve's death Harry lived in the house alone, and, except for going to the funeral of Herbert
in December 1963 and Otto in November of 1970, he stayed home.

[13]

It was rapidly getting dark outside as I started downstairs. My footsteps resounded through the
house, and as I cautiously crept through the darkness down the stairs, I saw Harry's picture on the
wall.

I felt as if any moment I might turn around to see Harry or any of the other Franzes who had once
lived here. Betty had probably felt this way when she used to come over at night to check on her
husband's uncle before his death in 1978.

As I walked out, I took a last look in the dim light before leaving. The antique butter bowl in the
cupboard still full of butter, the shoes still sitting by the bed where Harry last took them off and
his pants and work shirts hanging on the wall all said that the presence of the family continued to
fill the house.

Closing the door in total darkness, I felt the house's wish for me to stay and once again fill it with
life, but I knew I had to leave. It was too late. The last remanent of its life died with Harry and no
one could give the house its vitality again. Nothing could revive the sagging floors and rotting sills
or bring back the people. Though I had entered their past to relive it for a few hours, I couldn't
stay. It was gone.